How 40 degree Celsius plus spells scorched India in May | India News

NEW DELHI: With the monsoon still stuck in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, central, northern and western India is experiencing a hot summer starting from the first week of April. For those in Delhi who think they’ve had a particularly bad time this year, an analysis of May daily maximum temperature data for more than a hundred stations located around the country gives found 26 recorded heat waves 40 times longer than in the national capital.
Akola in Maharashtra and Barmer, Jaisalmer and Kota in Rajasthan has seen surface temperatures pass 40 degrees every day of May. Similarly, temperatures over 40 were recorded in 30 days in Bikaner (Rajasthan) and 29 days in Churu (Rajasthan), Jhansi (UP) and Ramugundam in Telangana.
The analysis is based on data taken from the US government’s National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which is the world’s largest repository of weather data collated from stations around the world.

TOI analyzed daily maximum temperature data for May for 101 stations, for which the NCDC had temperature records for at least 29 of the 31 days in May.
There are 14 stations with maximum temperatures exceeding 40 degrees on more than 90% of days in May. These stations, in addition to those already mentioned, include Ganganagar, Jaipur and Jodhpur in Rajasthan, Guna and Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh and Hissar in Haryana. Then there are eight stations where at least 80% of the days of the month see temperatures above the 40-degree threshold. Three of these —Sagar, Bhopal and Satna – are all in Madhya Pradesh while Gujarat, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Telangana all have such a station – Rajkot, Daltonganj, Gondia, Ajmer and Nizamabadcorresponding.
The next batch, which also includes the national capital, is the group of stations where temperatures in May crossed 40 degrees on at least 70% of the days. These are Amritsar, Varanasi, Jharsuguda and Sambalpur in Odisha, Bhaunagar (Gujarat) and Safdarjung in Delhi.
The data showed that 33 out of 101 stations had temperatures surpassing 40 degrees on at least 50% of the days in May. The major cities on this list – apart from those mentioned – are Sambalpur in Odisha, Hoshangabad in Madhya Pradesh, Udaipur in Rajasthan, Aurangabad in Maharashtra and Deesa in Gujarat.
There are also 40 stations where maximum temperatures never cross 40 degrees in May. Apart from hill stations, the list includes Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, Puri, Dwarka and Thiruvananthapuram. Pune, another city known for its mild weather, has seen temperatures exceed 40 degrees twice.